Terrific summary of the change laboratory approach and its relation to
the issues of research when one starts to take analysis of the socio0
institutional contexts of one's local circumstances systematically
into consideration. It related back to the Bill-Helen discussion
of how it is even possible to study the dynamic change between
"the activity" and "its context" AND within each "level" of the
overall system.
My proposal of a mesogenetic methodology is my way of trying to
deal with the resulting (seemingly excessive) demand for both
creating a new kind of activity (an afterschool activity) AND
taking seriously the co-evolving changes at the cultural historical
level.
Your invocation of Aaron Cicourel brought these issues to the table
for me in a very concrete way. In any presentation of our work, it
was inevitable that Aaron would point out that we did not have sufficient
data linking our micro-focused phenomena to the "macro-focused"
phenomena and their role in constructing the micro-phemena.
I see the solution only in teamwork, in the creations of teams of
people who can, collectively, more or less "surround" the study
of developmental dynamics at at lest three analytic levels. I
take Jay to be making this argument (see upcoming MCA).
Yrjo has one kind of team which is producing incredible demand
as an organizational problem solver in Finland. But the as a rule
his group is severely limited in being able to follow the process
through more than one, or at best, two, cycles. They are working
on the problem, I know.
Yrjo criticized our work because, at the start, it was not sufficiently
grounded in the history of the institutions within which we were working.
Very true it was and to some extent still is. But we been working the
same institution for 13 years. There are yearly cycles and cylcles
within years (our quarter system), and kid sports season cycles, all
"visible" that interact with the institution and its well entrenched
culture.
We are at present, so to speak, both inside and outside the social
phenomena we want to study that relate to the changes status of the
activity we, in barely understood agreement with our host institution,
jointly agreed would be a "good thing."
But the problems of description, of data reduction to a re-presentation
that is both true to the essentials of what appear to be details, and
to the more aggregated, and costly to document, changes that condition
when those details, costs money.
Problems enough to keep one busy!
mike
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